He was tempted to walk away and return to the house in search of the whisky that he hoped to hell would somehow be hiding in a corner. But there was a glint in her eye—an invitation—that made him want to appease her.
He curled his fingers into a fist and threw a halfhearted punch at the makeshift punching bag. It barely moved.
“It’s a good thing I’m here,” she said. “If anyone was determined to grab you, you wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“I don’t want to hit it so hard I’ll throw you off your feet,” he challenged. It had been years, but he used to box. He knew his way around a ring. And then he remembered Madeline Murray had come with him because she was supposed to handle any threats of physical violence coming Beau’s way. He remembered the knives. The books on martial arts. And her off-hand remark about having to ensure the safety of the women at Everwell from anyone who presented a threat.
Her lips turned up into a daring smile. “You won’t.”
He obliged her, this time with a right upper cut and a left hook. The bag moved haphazardly, like his form.
“Again,” she repeated. “And don’t worry about your form so much. This isn’t a boxing ring. The opponent is inside you. Just let it out.”
Beau focused on punching the bag. With each strike, he imagined the life he’d known. The man who’d raised him, now dead. The family next door who might very well be his. How everything he understood about himself might no longer be true. After endless strikes at the bag, he paused, his breath heavy, his heart pounding.
“Frank loved Neil—my brother-in-law,” Beau said between ragged breaths. If there was little Beau could do right in Frank’s eyes, there seemed to be nothing Neil could do wrong.
“But he didn’t raise Neil,” she said, throwing him a linen towel to wipe the sweat from his brow. “And he didn’t will him control of the company, did he?”
Beau mused on that. It was always assumed that Beau would take ownership of the company but Neil’s keen business sense and his gift for numbers, as well as his devotion to Beau’s sister, all but secured him a key position at Silver Lumber. Beau had always assumed that Frank gave the company to Beau because he was his son.
But he might have assumed wrong.
“Did Neil suspect, do you think?”
“Do you mean about me not being Frank’s son?” Beau shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“But you’re not sure,” she prodded. “Could there have been rumours? You said he and Frank were close. Would he have ever betrayed that in confidence?”
Beau blinked, stunned by the implication she was making. He couldn’t imagine Frank betraying that fact to anyone. But that didn’t mean Neil couldn’t have had his suspicions.
“If they were as close as you say, maybe he discovered the truth,” she said. “Just because people are your relations doesn’t make them naturally better or more inclined to love you,” she said. “Sometimes they can be the ones who will hurt you most.”
There was something—a subtle little catch in her voice. And maybe he misheard it, his own tattered emotion billowing like a ripped sail in a stiff wind. But it caught his attention. He turned to her, her red hair being gently tugged this way and that by the sweet evening breeze, the sun, starting it’s slow descent, lighting up her face and heightening the fiery glow of her hair. She seemed at once strong, yet brittle. Like she was speaking from behind the dull ache of an old wound. The idea that anyone might have hurt Madeline Murray tightened something primal in his chest. His mind went immediately to Nelson Taylor who’d insulted her that day on the platform. The people he’d been so eager to sell this place to. The people who just offered him even more money than he’d originally asked.
And the people who would no doubt make an unequally ungenerous offer to the Chandlers.
And how did he know that?
Because he might have done the same thing. It made good business sense. Making money was what a da Silva did.
But he wasn’t sure he was a da Silva anymore.
Beau raked a hand through his hair. Neil had the ear of the upper levels of Silver Lumber. He could have very easily convinced them to put the price on Beau’s head if it was the company he wanted. Through Jessica, he’d have it if Beau was out of the way. And Neil knew about Beau’s pistol. They’d been together when he bought it.
“I want to be wrong about this,” he said. “For my sister’s sake, if nothing else.”
“Maybe you are, but we need to get this information to Dominic,” she said. “It will give him something to go on.”
“It will kill Jess if he’s guilty,” he said.
“Your sister is probably stronger than you think,” she said, looking in him the eye with a flash of defiance. “She’s lost her father. She doesn’t need to lose her brother, too.”
Chapter Fourteen
The next morning, Beau was cutting through the thick tangle of grape vines that had claimed the old pergola. Pulling the old one down and rebuilding it promised to be a full day’s work, and Madeline had already been up early, making coffee, baking, and creating a small feast to fuel the work.
He should have been exhausted after a sleepless night, but as the first light of dawn caught the treetops, he was dressed and out the door. There was too much on his mind, and the only way to push through it was to move. By the time the low rumble of cartwheels and the gentle clinking of harnesses caught his attention, he already had most of the grapevines pulled away.